IBM and 3Com revealed on Thursday that they are working together to integrate IBM’s “all in one” System i midmarket servers with 3Com’s VCX IP telephony.

IBM will be able to offer integrated VoIP for the first time on its Series i5 platform. The Series i5 will run on a Linux partition within the server while 3Com’s VCX platform already runs on IBM’s xSeries servers.

“This 3Com solution is a great fit because customers can now run essentially their entire business on a single platform,” said Andrew Gorelik, COO of Strategic Computer Solutions and a New York based IBM channel partner. He also added that most of SCS’s Series i customers are not yet using IP telephony.

The partnership will aim to provide service to companies with 100 to 2,000 employees, mostly specializing in the 500 to 1,000 range.

“The availability of the 3Com solutions on the System i platform will give our broad base of clients a powerful option to run a complete IP telephony solution without adding new boxes to their environment,” says general manager of IBM’s System i, Mark Shearer. “This is a milestone in further simplifying the avalanche of data that small and mid-sized clients face and enabling innovation in their businesses.”